3 Americans convicted in tortures

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Three Americans--led by a former Green Beret who boasted he had Pentagon support--were found guilty Wednesday of torturing Afghans in a private jail and were sentenced to prison.

After a session that lasted more than seven hours in a stuffy Kabul courtroom, the three-judge panel was unanimous in convicting the former soldier, Jonathan Idema, and his right-hand man, Brent Bennett, on charges of entering Afghanistan illegally, making illegal arrests, establishing a private jail and torturing their captives. They were sentenced to 10 years.

Edward Caraballo, a cameraman who said he was making a film about America's war on terrorism, received an eight-year term. Four young Afghan accomplices were sentenced to terms ranging from one to five years; one of them burst into tears with the verdict.

Idema, who has a previous fraud conviction, claimed to have had high-level support from the Pentagon and Afghan officials in his group's efforts to hunt down terrorists, but the U.S. military says the men were freelancers operating outside the law and without its knowledge.

Idema, who wore sunglasses and khaki fatigues bearing an American flag, denounced the trial as a throwback to the times of the hard-line Islamic Taliban movement.

"It's the same sick Taliban judges, the same sick sense of justice," Idema said as he was led out of the courtroom. "I knew that the American government wasn't going to help me."